Wired Appliances Add Surfing to Kitchen Duty

Two of Asia's leading electronics manufacturers have unveiled smarter home appliances, perhaps hastening the day your kitchen electronics can collectively gang up on you. Samsung Electronics unveiled a refrigerator that can access the Internet and be used to watch television, while Matsushita Electric (better known by its Panasonic brand name) announced a smart microwave oven.

Samsung's new refrigerator is not so much a smart appliance as a refrigerator/PC hybrid. The device sports a large 15-inch LCD panel on the front door that rivals those on most notebook computers and serves as the central interface to the computer system.

Through the touch panel, you can access the Internet to surf the Web, send and receive e-mail, or watch television. You can also attach other audio/visual devices, such as DVD or VHS players.

All of this intelligence comes at a price, however. The Internet refrigerator, shipping first in Japan, is priced at $9360.

The wired fridge comes equipped to control other devices planned by the electronics maker. Samsung says the refrigerator can control microwave ovens, washing machines, and air conditioners by sending control signals through a house's conventional electrical wiring. The other appliances are still being developed by the company.

The Net-savvy refrigerator will compete with a similar model that Whirlpool introduced more than a year ago. The appliance manufacturer teamed with Cisco to develop a line of Internet-enabled household devices.

Oven Can Advise

Matsushita's wired microwave oven is also shipping first in Japan, priced at $1045. It features an electronic recipe-book function that lets you load in recipes via a Secure Digital card, a format developed by Matsushita with Toshiba and SanDisk. An 8MB memory card can store about 365 recipes, the company says.

The electronic cook book is accessed via a 3.8-inch color LCD panel on the front of the microwave and automatically sets the oven's cooking temperature, microwave power, and cooking time. When the oven identifies what you are cooking, it can suggest side dishes and provide other advice, according to Matsushita. The company also suggests, perhaps a little too optimistically, that the new oven will take the "drudgery out of cooking."

The two companies are the latest to attempt to load advanced electronics into home appliances. One of the leaders in the field, LG Electronics, announced several wired appliances last year. It unveiled a microwave oven with Internet functions in February. Its wired washing machine can connect to the Internet to download washing programs. And the company has shown a refrigerator that can surf the Web and be used to make Internet telephone calls.